Life Confucianism as A New Philosophy: Love and Thought

By Yushun Huang

Life itself has long gone unnoticed in Confucian texts since the Qin and Han dynasties, which is similar to the forgetting of Being, per se, in the Western philosophy after the Axial Period, according to Heidegger. Today, there is a philosophical mission to return life to Confucianism, restoring and reconstructing Confucianism in the perspective of a comparison between Confucianism and Husserl's Phenomenology. The author reduces the features of life to the essence of a thing but returns to life as the essence of Being. The author rejects the idea of post-philosophy in order to reconstruct the metaphysical and the post-metaphysical gradations of Confucianism. These gradations are made along three strata in the life of human beings-no-being of anything (a life comprehension), metaphysical thinghood (the absolute Being), and post-metaphysical things (the relative beings). In this way we have a full understanding of the idea of Confucianism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bridge 21 Publications
• Release date: Jul 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781626430075

Yushun Huang

Huang Yushun PhD in philosophy (2000) from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, now Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at Shandong University. His main research fields cover Chinese Philosophy, Confucian Philosophy, and Comparative Philosophy. Regarded as one of the representatives of the revival movement of Confucianism, Huang develops “Life Confucianism” and “Chinese Theory of Justice”, which has had an important impact at home and abroad.

Book preview

Love and Thought

LIFE CONFUCIANISM AS A NEW PHILOSOPHY

Huang Yushun

Translated by Li Xuening and Yan Meirong Revised by Ben Abbey

Bridge 21 Publications | Encino

Life Confucianism as a New Philosophy:Love and Thought

by HUANG Yushun

Copyright ©2020 HUANG Yushun

Published by Bridge21 Publications, LLC www.bridge21.us

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All rights reserved. English language rights are licensed to Bridge21 Publications, LLC. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Translation Supported by the Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Grant No. 13WZX008)

Translated by Li Xuening and Yan Meirong

Revised by Ben Abbey

Cover Design: Tanya van Ness

Interior Design: Linda Ronan

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-62643-006-8 Hardcover

ISBN 978-1-62643-007-5 ePub | ebook pdf | Kindle

CONTENTS

Preface to the English Edition

Introduction

Lecture I: The Gradations of Ideas

1.1 Equality and Equivalency: Proper Name and Functional Position

1.2 The Gradations of Ideas

• 1.2.1 Heidegger

• 1.2.2 Lao Tzu

• 1.2.3 Confucianism

1.3 The Ideas of Being in Confucianism: This Being (shi 是), the Being (you 有), and Being (zai 在)

• 1.3.1 是 (shi): Judging the Post-Metaphysical Beings

• 1.3.2 有 (you): Tracing the Metaphysical Being

• 1.3.3 Being (zai在): Life

Lecture II: The Ideas of Love

2.1 Nature

• 2.1.1 Nature (xing性) and Emotion (qing情): The Structure of Metaphysics in Confucianism

• 2.1.2 Nature and Birth-Giving (sheng生): The Source of Metaphysics in Confucianism

• 2.1.3 Nature and Subjectivity

2.2 Emotion

• 2.2.1 Qing (Emotion) of Humans

• 2.2.2 Qing (Situation) of Actions

• 2.2.3 Life Emotion

2.3 Love

• 2.3.1 Love (ai愛) as the Source

• 2.3.2 Benevolence (ren仁) as the Source

Lecture III: The Ideas of Thought

3.1 Thought in Western Philosophy: The Perplexity of Epistemology

3.2 Thought in Chinese Idea: Love and Thought

• 3.2.1 The Meaning of Thought (si思) or Thinking (sixiang思想) at the Gradation of the Source in Chinese

• 3.2.2 Thought and Love: Emotional Thought

• 3.2.3 Thought and Narration of Poetry at the Gradation of the Source

• 3.2.4 Imagination, Image and Presentation: Comprehensive Thought

3.3 The Constructiveness of Thought: From the Metaphysical to the Post-Metaphysical

• 3.3.1 Metaphysical Thought: Reconstructing Metaphysics

• 3.3.2 Post-Metaphysical Thought: Reconstructing Post-Metaphysics

Lecture IV: The Ideas of Dimensions (jingjie境界)

4.1 Kung Fu (功夫)

4.2 Confucius and Hui’s Cheerfulness

• 4.2.1 Easiness (an安) (in Mind) and Cheerfulness (le乐)

• 4.2.2 Cheerfulness for Something and Cheerfulness for Nothing

• 4.2.3 Cheerfulness (le乐) and Music (yue乐)

4.3 On Dimensions

• 4.3.1 The Spontaneous Dimension (zifa jingjie自发境界): Being in Life

• 4.3.2 The For-itself Dimension (ziwei jingjie自为境界): Going to Live a Life

• 4.3.3 The Free Dimension (ziru jingjie自如境界): Returning to Life

Appendix I: On 观念 (guan nian) in the Chinese Language

The First Part: 观念 (guan nian) Is Thinking

• 1.1. Thought of Emotion

• 1.2. Thought of Desire

• 1.3. Thought of Cognition

The Second Part: Thought Is from Observation (guan觀)

• 2.1. Post-Metaphysical Viewing

• 2.2. Metaphysical Observation

• 2.3. Source Observation

Appendix II: On Life as the Source

1. Life per se: Life as Life

• 1.1. Birth-Giving (sheng生) and Endless Birth-Giving (shengsheng 生生): Being Given Birth and Living (sheng-huo生-活)

• 1.2. Life Is Being

• 1.3. Life as Identity (hunlun混沦)

• 1.4. Naturalness (ziran自然): Life Is Self-Same (ziji ruci自己 如此)

2. Situation of the Source: We Are in Life

• 2.1. Being in Life

• 2.2. Living in the World: We Are in Life

• 2.3. Benevolence (ren仁) as the Source: Co-Living

• 2.4. Thing as the Source: Action (shiqing事情)

3. The Structure of the Source: Being in Life and Going to Live a Life

• 3.1. Life as Encounter (jiyu际遇): Being in Life

• 3.2. Sage (sheng聖) at the Gradation of the Source: Giving Ear to Vocation (tianming天命)

• 3.3. Life as Transcending: Going to Live a Life

• 3.4. The Good Ability (liangneng良能): The Ability at the Gradation of the Source

• 3.5. Life as Freedom: Being in Life and Going to Live a Life

4. The Appearing Manner of Life: Way of Life

• 4.1. Life as Appearing

• 4.2. The Appearing Manner

• 4.3. The Source of the Way of Life

• 4.4. The Source of Culture, History and Nationality

Translators’ Afterword

Bibliography of Cited Translation Works

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION

As a contemporary theoretical form of Confucianism, Life Confucianism has been widely recognized in the fields of Confucianism and Philosophy in China. A number of famous scholars have made comments regarding Life Confucianism in academic journals.¹ And Sun Tieqi has published a monograph on Life Confucianism.² Besides these notices, Life Confucianism was put forward for inclusion in the project lists of some academic funds in China, such as the philosophy and social sciences planning project of Anhui Province³ and the research project of the postdoctoral research institute at Shandong University.⁴ Consequently, Life Confucianism has been regarded as one of the six schools of New Century Neo-Confucianists in Mainland China⁵ and one of the ten schools of Theoretical Innovations of Modern Confucianism.⁶ At the same time, I have been described as one of the representatives of the Revitalization Movement of Confucianism in the new century.⁷

Moreover, Life Confucianism has established an international influence. I personally authored an article introducing Life Confucianism published in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy.⁸ The philosopher Stephen Angle made a comment on Life Confucianism in his monograph, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy Toward Progressive Confucianism, and I was classified as one of the Synthetic Confucians, together with many other philosophers such as Roger Ames, Robert Neville, Thomas Metzger, and so on.

However, the essential aspects of Life Confucianism have not fully come across in some English-speaking countries. For example, Stephen Angle misunderstood the assumption that these individuals, i.e., Confucian researchers, may identify with multiple traditions and draw centrally on non-Confucian philosophical traditions, then integrate these traditions in one synthetic form of Confucianism.⁹ He asserted that I was taking inspiration from Heidegger in order to develop what I call Life Confucianism.¹⁰ It seems to me that the remark overlooks my criticisms of Heidegger’s phenomenology. What is more, there are some limitations in the interpretation of Life Confucianism merely from the perspective of political philosophy.

Having written five books on Life Confucianism,¹¹ I selected Love and Thought: Life Confucianism as a New Philosophy to be the most representative work. So, I trusted Professor Li Xuening and his team with its translation. After the completion of the first draft of the translation, I was engaged in its revision.

The process of revising the English version gave me a chance to reflect on Life Confucianism in the context of trans-cultural communication. My reflection was mainly related to the linguistic and ideological problems of communication between China and the West, which are inevitably exposed in a Chinese-English translation. Here, I would like to take this opportunity to offer a brief explanation.

As for the translation, I will discuss this issue in Section 1.1, Lecture I of this book—Equality and Equivalency: Proper Name and Functional Position. The main idea is that there are both equivalencies and incompatibilities between different languages. There is certainly an equivalency between two languages; otherwise, it would be impossible for people to translate and understand each other. However, the equivalency is not a precise one-to-one corresponding relationship. That is to say, it is not based on the strict semantic equivalence of two words in different languages. In fact, there are often few one-to-one correspondences between words of two languages in terms of meaning. Here and there, such inequality is so serious that a word cannot be translated directly at all. It reminds me of 道 (dao), a key word in Chinese philosophy. There were many different free translations, such as Way, Infinity, Logic and so on. However, its transliteration, i.e., Tao is more popular.

To take another example, the Chinese word 情 (qing) is arguably one of the key words involved in Life Confucianism (cf. Section 2.2, Lecture II of this book). It cannot be translated directly into English. The reason is that 情 (qing) is a polysemous word containing two meanings: emotion (ganqing感情) and action (shiqing事情). I found it very difficult to translate Chuang Tzu’s 人之情 (ren zhi qing) and 事之情 (shi zhi qing).¹² Chuang Tzu used the same word 情 (qing) either in negating 人之情(ren zhi qing) as a subjectivity or affirming 事之情(shi zhi qing) as the Source, so I really didn’t know how to deal with the translation at first. After much thought, I chose to translate 情 (qing) as Qing or qing, which is analogous to the translation of 道 (dao) into Tao or tao. I hope for Qing or qing to be listed as an entry in English dictionaries in the future, just as Tao or tao has been.

I noted just now that 情 (qing) is one of the most important key words in Life Confucianism. As a matter of fact, this statement applies not only to Life Confucianism, but also to Confucianism or even to Chinese culture as a whole. My statement is based on an interesting discovery; orthographically, the radical on one side of the Chinese character 情(qing) is 忄(xin), the literal meaning of which is emotion. The Ancient Chinese catalogued four emotions—pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy¹³—and even more specifically, seven emotions, including pleasure, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate, and desire.¹⁴ Superficially, there seems to be no relation between these emotions and actions. However, the Ancient Chinese sometimes used the word 情 (qing) to refer to 事 (shi), so we have a word 事情 (shiqing) (action) and a group of interrelated words such as 实情 (shiqing) (fact), 情况 (qingkuang) (condition), 情景 (qingjing) (scene), 情境 (qingjing) (situation) and so on. That is to say, both emotions and actions are realizations of Qing.

I once mentioned that the underlying foundation of Western philosophy is the unity of being, thought and language.¹⁵ Additionally I would like to say that the fundamental principle of Chinese philosophy is the unity of being, emotion and language.¹⁶ It is a pity that this viewpoint has not been fully perceived. Therefore, it is necessary to illustrate this viewpoint so as to help readers have a better understanding of Life Confucianism.

Of course, the most important key word in Life Confucianism is life (shenghuo生活). So, what is the relation among life, emotion, action, and human beings? When it comes to 情景 (qingjing) (scene) and 情境 (qingjing) (situation), I cannot help but think of the thought in Wang Guowei’s Earthly Comment on Poetry, which discusses the issue of 境界 (jingjie) (dimensions). Although 境界 (jingjie) and 情境 (qingjing) share a same character 境 (jing), 情境 (qingjing) is a compounding of 情 (qing) and 境 (jing). So, what is the relation between 情 (qing) and 境 (jing)? Wang continued: All the verses of a scene are the verses of emotion. So, what is the relation between 情 (qing) and 景 (jing)? Consequently, what is the relation of 景 (jing) and 境 (jing)? When 情 (qing) refers to emotion in particular, ancient people often talked about the relation of 情 (qing) (emotion) and 性 (xing) (nature), such as 情性 (qingxing) (emotion-nature) and 性情 (xingqing) (nature-emotion). Additionally, a semantic component of the Chinese character 性 (xing) (nature) is 生 (sheng) (life). Then, what is the relation between 性 (xing) (nature) and 生 (sheng) (life)? These intricate relations cause problems for translation, as well as a puzzle even for Chinese speakers. If these problems were solved, a great mystery of Chinese culture would be uncovered.

Now, let me try to clarify these relations and explain how these words should be translated into English. The reason why people were unable to clearly understand the above relations might be for the lack of some thought horizon. The thought horizon is an idea that is roughly the same in Life Confucianism and Heidegger’s phenomenology.¹⁷ However, the idea went unnoticed by Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. To put it simply, we should pull apart Being and the metaphysics of Being in order to reveal post-metaphysical being and beings. We should make it clear that what brings forth all the beings is Being, but not vice versa. All the words—including life, action and emotion (or qing)—are related to the distinction of what I call the gradations of ideas.

Being (Life) → the metaphysical → the post-metaphysical

I would like to add that the usages of the above-mentioned Chinese and English words vary in different texts. Nevertheless, concepts should be made clear in the formulation of Life Confucianism and its translation, just as with the construction of any rigorous theory that is devoid of ambiguity in its system of concepts. So, we must ensure the rigorous semantic specification of these words and determine a fixed corresponding relation between English and Chinese terms. Of course, our endeavor is not casual or arbitrary but takes into consideration their actual usages in Chinese and English as much as possible.

First, I’d like to tabulate these key words in Life Confucianism and their translations (please note the differences caused by capitalization, definiteness and plurality). Then, I will give a brief explanation.

Being is nothing but Life, and Life is nothing but Being. Everything is the embodiment of Life or Qing of Life. That is to say, the metaphysical One and the post-metaphysical ones, or the birth of human beings and the growth of plants - all come from Life and belong to Life. One point must be underlined, that Life is by no means equivalent to metaphysical Being or the noumenon in traditional philosophy. Noumenon is a being or a thing while Life is the action instead of a being or a thing. So, Life is called Non-being (wu无).

In general, Life is realized as human life, which is also the way of human existence. In the first place, humans are produced by Life, which I call being in life. After a human being is produced by Life and his subjectivity is established, he sometimes objectifies this life and makes it a post-metaphysical thing, i.e., an object of human understanding and practice. Then the human being is able to change the life of his own, which I call going to live a life. Sometimes Life is even ontologicalized, and becomes a metaphysical thing, for example in some writings by Liang Shuming.¹⁸ It is actually a way of humans going to live a life, i.e., the way of philosophy or theology. Being in life and going to live a life—this is the Source structure of Life per se, which still belongs to Life itself.

Life is action (shi事), and the action has its qing (qing情). So, we have a word 事情 (shiqing) (action). Chuang Tzu paraphrased 事 情 (shiqing) as 事之情 (shizhiqing) (Qing of action), which is different from 人之情 (renzhiqing) (qing of human being). The former is the Source, and the latter is post-metaphysical. If the action as the Source is rendered post-metaphysical or becomes a post-metaphysical qing, it is the very emotion of humans and is then regarded as the realization of some inherent characteristic of humans. The inherent character that is called nature (xing性) is the post-metaphysical nature, that is, a relative subjectivity. When the relative subjectivity is rendered metaphysical or becomes the metaphysical nature, it is the absolute subjectivity and evolves into the ideas such as noumenon or God.

In fact, 事情 (shiqing) actually refers to the situation of action as the Source, which I call the situation of Life (shenghuo qingjing生活情境). In the situation, there is no discrimination between individual people, or even between human and plant. In a word, there is no discrimination between all things, and Chuang Tzu has called the state indistinguishableness (hundun混沌).¹⁹ After the subjectivity rises, the discriminating phenomenon appears; and when the subject goes to live a life, the situation is regarded as 情况 (qingkuang) (a condition). Actually, there is not 情況 (qingkuang), but 情实 (qingshi) or 实情 (shiqing) (the truth of action) in the situation, which Confucians call 诚 (cheng) (sincerity). Just like qing, sincerity means both the honesty of emotion and the reality of action. When subjectivized, sincerity is called the tao of the human (ren zhi dao人之道); when ontologicalized, it is called the Tao of heaven (tian zhi dao天之道).²⁰ In reality, sincerity is Qing, the truth of action in Life. When the truth of action is objectivized by the subject, it is regarded as 情景 (qingjing) (scene), which is a 景象 (jingxiang) (spectacle) or an 现象 (xianxiang) (appearance). Consequently, it seems that people live as though they are acting in a drama where people are merely playing roles, and thus the phrase, the stage of life. Moreover, all the arts have also been subjectivized or objectivized, so there are such wordings as 场景 (changjing) (scenes), 布景 (bujing) (stage setting), 景 物 (jingwu) (scenery) and 写景 (xiejing) (scenery description). Wang Guowei became aware of this alienation and pointed out the truth that all the verses of scene are the verses of emotion, in which it is hard to distinguish between selfhood and the object.²¹ This is the truth of Life, which belongs to the situation of action per se.

As for action per se, there is an equivalent term, thing-in-itself, in English. This term is an inaccurate translation of Sache selbst in German because thing in English refers to both action and object, which are not at the same gradation of an idea. However, there are two methods of translation in Chinese: 自在之物 (zizai zhi wu) (thing in itself ) for Kant’s works, and 事情本身 (shiqing benshen) (action per se) for Heidegger’s.

There is another question to be explained. In Chinese, 情 (qing) refers to both action and emotion. When it refers to emotion, there are distinctions at gradations of ideas. As known to all, the issue of emotion is one of the most complex problems on the Earth. Consequently, there are a large number of related words in English—such as affect, affection, mood, emotion, feel, feelings, passion, sensation, sense, sensibility, sentiment… Their meanings and usages are very complicated and difficult to pin down. As mentioned above, we should make some distinctions between them. In Life Confucianism, we divide them into feel (ganchu感 触), sentiment (qingxu情绪) and affection (ganqing感情). All of them could be understood either post-metaphysically or as the Source (cf. 2. 2 in this book).

In ancient China, there were classifications of the seven emotions (pleasure, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate and desire) or the four emotions (pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy) in The Mean. In my opinion, pleasure, anger, grief, joy and fear are transient sentiments, but love and hate are steady affections. Mencius made a strict distinction between the transient sentiment of commiseration (ceyin恻隐)²² and the steady affection of benevolence (ren ai仁爱) and held that the former was the initiation of the Source.²³ Strictly speaking, desire is not an emotion, but intention or will. Since desire takes emotion as its recondition, so there is the word 情欲 (qingyu) (emotion-desire), just like 情之欲 (qing zhi yu) (desire of emotion) as put forward by Chu Hsi.²⁴

It is necessary to talk about the essential differences between Life Confucianism and some Western schools that also address the subject of emotion. The most important one is Emotionalism, which was translated as 情感主义 (qinggan zhuyi) or 唯情论 (weiqinglun) in Chinese. This school could be traced back to David Hume’s ethical thoughts on the theory of morals in Volume III of A Treatise of Human Nature²⁵ and its modified version, titled An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.²⁶ The modern form of Emotionalism is Emotionalist Ethics, which is one of the typical theoretical forms of modern Western meta-ethics, the representatives of which are Bertrand Russell, Alfred Ayer, Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach and Charles Stevenson. They believe that ethics is a kind of expression of emotion rather than a factual description, so it lacks the universal determinacy and logical necessity of logic and science. We will leave aside the right and wrong of this idea from the perspective of ethics for the moment. Here, I just want to point out that Life Confucianism is far beyond ethics. In other words, ethics is merely an aspect of the post-metaphysical gradation in Life Confucianism.²⁷ The emotion in Emotionalist Ethics is not qing of action (shizhiqing事之情), but qing of humans (renzhiqing人之情). That is to say, it is not the idea intended as the Source.

In fact, what impressed me most was the Emotional Confucianism²⁸ advanced by Meng Peiyuan, a famous Chinese philosopher. In the world of philosophy, he took the lead in putting forward the profound viewpoint that the human is an emotional being²⁹ and that Chinese philosophy is a philosophy of emotion.³⁰ Here, I want to show my deepest respect and sincere gratitude to him, who was my doctoral supervisor.

Last, I want to thank Professor Li Xuening and Yan Meirong for their hard work in translation, and Dr. Gregory Kaplan for his excellent job regarding the publication of this book. I would also like to express my appreciation for the many hours of work that Mr. Ben Abbey spent in copyediting and revising the draft of the translation.

NOTES

1 Cui Fazhan and Du Xia, Life – Humaneness – Spiritual Dimensions: Comments on Life Confucianism (Anhui People’s Publishing House, 2011). This book embodies 32 articles.

2 Sun Tieqi, A Comparative Study of Life Confucianism and Philosophy of the Reason in Song and Ming Dynasties (Anhui People’s Publishing House, 2013).

3 Zhou Liangfa, A New Developing Direction of Confucianism: A Brief Comment on Huang Yushun’s Life Confucianism. Journal of Weinan Normal College (2011). This article was the result of a Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project of Anhui Province in 2009 (project number: AHSK09-10D151).

4 The topic of Sun Tieqi’s report is Research on Life Confucianism, which belongs to the research project of the post doctoral mobile station at Shandong University.

5 Cui Gang, Research on New Century Neo-Confucianists in Mainland China (Anhui People’s Publishing Houses, 2012). The representatives of the six schools are Jiang Qing, Chen Ming, Zhang Xianglong, Sheng Hong, Gan Chunsong and Huang Yushun.

6 Presided by Guo Yi, Making New: The Theoretical Innovations of Modern Confucianism (Peking University Press, 2013). The representatives of the ten schools are Tu Weiming, Li Zehou, Liu Shuxian, Chung-ying Cheng, Mou Zongjian, Roger Ames, Zhang Liwen, Lin Anwu, Guo Yiand Huang Yushun.

7 http://baike.baidu.com, a famous Chinese website www.baidu.com.

8 Chen Xin and Huang Yushun, Confucianism and Contemporary Life – Collected Essays on Life Confucianism. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2012, 11:393-397 [ISSN: 1540-3009]; DOI 10.1007/s11712-012-9287-9.

9 Stephen Angle, Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy Toward Progressive Confucianism (Polity Press, 2012), 16.

10 Ibid.

11 The four collected works are: Confucianism Facing Life Per se: Yushun Huang’s Selected Works of Life Confucianism; Confucian Thoughts and Contemporary Life: Papers on Life Confucianism; Confucianism and Life: Papers on Life Confucianism; Lectures on Life Confucianism.

12 Appearing Manner of Character in Chuang Tzu.

13 The Doctrine of the Mean in The Book of Rites.

14 The Doctrine of the Mean in The Book of Rites.

15 Huang Yushun, Language Cage – An Explanation of the Fundamental Tradition of Western Philosophy. Journal of Sichuan University (2002).

16 As for the question of language, we can leave it open for the moment.

17 Heidegger did not take a firm stand on the point that Being brings forth all the beings, which I criticized many times.

18 Huang Yushun, The Harbinger of the Turn of Life Theory in Contemporary Confucianism – Liang Shuming’s Idea of Life. Journal of Hebei University (2008).

19 Who Should Be King in Chuang Tzu.

20 The Mean in The Book of Rites.

21 Wang Guowei: Earthly Comment on Poetry.

22 Huang Yushun, On Compassion of Confucianism And Sympathy of Scheler’s: A Comparison Between Confucianism and Phenomenology of Emotion.

23 Part I of Gongsun Chou in Mencius.

24 Chu Hsi: Preface of Variorum on The Book of Poetry.

25 David Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature (Commercial Press, 1980).

26 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (China Legal Publishing House, 2011).

27 Chinese Theory of Justice is the very ethics of Life Confucianism.

28 http://baike.baidu.com, famous Chinese website www.baidu.com.

29 Meng Peiyuan: Man is an emotional being: Re-interpretation of Confucian Philosophy.

30 Meng Peiyuan: Emotion And Reason, page 310.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Cui Fazhan, Du Xia. Life – Humaneness - Spiritual Dimensions: Comments on Life Confucianism [生活·仁爱·境界——评生活儒学]. Anhui People’s Publishing House, 2011.

2. Sun Tieqi. A Comparative Study of Life Confucianism and Philosophy of the Reason in Song and Ming Dynasties [生活儒学与宋明理学比较研究]. Anhui People’s Publishing House, 2013.

3. Zhou Liangfa. A New Developing Direction of Confucianism: A Brief Comment on Huang Yushun’s Life Confucianism. [儒学展开的新向度：略评黄玉順的 生活儒学]. Journal of Weinan Normal College, 7, 2011.

4. Cui Gang. Research on New Century Neo-Confucianists in Mainland China [新世纪 大陆新儒家研究]. Anhui People’s Publishing Houses, 2012.

5. Guo Yi. Making New: The Theoretical Innovations of Modern Confucianism [开新—— 当代儒学理论创构]. Peking University Press, 2013.

6. http://baike.baidu.com.

7. Chen Xin, Huang Yushun. Confucianism and Contemporary Life – Collected Essays on Life Confucianism. Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 2012.

8. Stephen Angle. Contemporary Confucian Political Philosophy Toward Progressive Confucianism, Polity Press, 2012.

9. Ibid.

10. Wang Xianqian. Chuang Tzu. Edition of Wang Xianqian’s Annotating Centralization of Chuang Tzu [庄子注]. Commercial Press, 1934.

11. Huang Yushun. Confucianism Facing Life: Huang Yushun’s Selected Works of Life Confucianism [面向生活本身的儒学——黄玉順生活儒学自选集]. Sichuan University Press, 2006.

12. Huang Yushun. Confucianism and Life: Papers on Life Confucianism [儒学与生 活——生活儒学论稿]. Guangming Daily Press, 2009.

13. Huang Yushun. Confucianism and Life: Papers on Life Confucianism [儒学与生 活——生活儒学论稿].Sichuan University Press, 2009.

14. Huang Yushun. Lectures on Life Confucianism [生活儒学讲录]. Anhui People’s Press, 2012.

15. Huang Yushun. The Harbinger of the Turn of Life Theory in Contemporary Confucianism – Liang Shuming’s Idea of Life. [当代儒学生活论转向的先 声——梁漱溟的生活观念]. Journal of Hebei University. 2008(4).

16. Wang Guowei. Earthly Comment on Poetry [人间词话]. Qilu Publishing House, 1986.

17. Huang Yushun. On Compassion of Confucianism And Sympathy of Scheler’s: A Comparison Between Confucianism and Phenomenology of Emotion. [论恻隐与 同情——儒学与情感现象学比较研究]. Journal of Graduate School at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 2007(3).

18. Zhao Qi, Sun Shi. Mencius: Commentary and Exposition on Mencius. Edition of Commentaries and Expositions on The Thirteen Classics [孟子注疏]. Zhonghua Book Company, 1980.

19. Chu Hsi. Variorum on The Book of Poetry. New 1st ed. [诗集传]. Shanghai Ancient Books Press, 1980.

20. David Hume. A Treatise on Human Nature (translated by Guan Wenyun) [人性 论].Commercial Press, 1980.

21. David Hume. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (translated by Zhou Xiaoliang) [道德原理研究]. China Legal Publishing House, 2011.

22. Meng Peiyuan. Man is an emotional being: Re-interpretation of Confucian Philosophy. [人是情感的存在——儒家哲学再阐释]. Social Science Front. 2003(2).

INTRODUCTION

This book is based on a series of lectures I gave to some graduate students of the Philosophy Department at Sichuan University, China. Since the lectures lasted over four weeks and were given once per week, we had a transcript of four lectures, as follows:

Lecture I: The Gradation of Ideas

Lecture II: The Ideas of Love

Lecture III: The Ideas of Thought

Lecture IV: The Ideas of Dimensions

The original title of this transcript was Love and Thought: A Contemporary Interpretation of Confucian Thought. After the revision of the transcript, my doctoral student Cui Gang¹ proposed that the transcript should be developed into a book for publication. I accepted his proposal and replaced the subtitle with Life Confucianism as a New Philosophy.

I humbly inherit an academic tradition shared by both China and Western countries to compile a book from lectures. Although Husserl’s The Idea of Phenomenology was a masterpiece in the phenomenological movement, it developed from a transcript of a series of lectures; and many other classics in the history of Western philosophy have developed in this way. The same was also true of the development of many classics of Chinese thought in history, such as Analects of Confucius, Quotations of Zhu Xi’s Remarks, Quotations of Imparting and Learning, and Questions of the Great Learning. These classics were comprised of the lectures of masters, which were later recorded by their disciples. For my part, I have greatly enhanced the transcript of my lectures in this book. In addition, since there are shades of differences between idea in Western languages and "guannian (观念) in Chinese languages, I have appended my paper On Viewing-Thinking in Chinese" to the book in order to illustrate the difference.

What the lectures originally were intended to convey was the general ideas of Chinese people, especially the ideas of Confucianism. They aimed specifically to restore and construct Confucianism through the comparative study of Confucianism and the philosophical movement of phenomenology. That is to say, it was to explore the original thought of Confucianism facing Life per se. As for phenomenology, we adopt its principle of reduction to essence in a certain sense, but with a return to Life as Being, or metaphysics. At the same time, we reject the postmodern idea of anti-philosophy in order to reconstruct the metaphysics and the post-metaphysical implications of Confucianism based on the three strata in a gradation of the ideas upheld by the spiritual life of human beings: no-being of anything (a life comprehension) → a metaphysical thing (absolute Being) → post-metaphysical things (relative beings). Only by proceeding in a phenomenological way could we have a full understanding of the idea of Confucianism.

The idea of Confucianism was changeable (bianyi 变易) in its development. However, it has its own unchangeable (buyi 不易) heritage, which is quite simple (jianyi 简易). In my opinion, Confucianism is Life Confucianism, and vice versa.² Why is it necessary to lay stress on life? It is essential because Life per se has long been overlooked in studies of Confucianism since the Qin and Han dynasties, a phenomenon which is similar to the forgetting of Being in the Western philosophy after the Axial period according the narrative of Martin Heidegger. Today, the Confucians’ mission is to reconstruct Confucianism with a return to Life.

The Life Confucianism as a New Philosophy entails Love and Thought. These concepts denote the unchangeable out of the changeable and the simple out of the unchangeable in Confucianism. Confucians should treat Life per se as the Origin and Source—especially with the emotions of benevolence (ren 仁) or Love (ai 爱). Through "Thinking (si 思), Love consequently accomplishes the self-completion of oneself (chengji 成己) and completes things (chengwu 成物), and thus brings forth all the beings. This is the way to construct metaphysics and the post-metaphysical. Therefore, Love is above all treated as the love of the Source, namely, a heart that cannot bear (burenzhixin 不忍之心). Then, it progressively shifts to metaphysical love as the absolute subjectivity, substantiality or noumenon. Finally, it is concretized as post-metaphysical love as a moral emotion. So too, Thought is first of all the emotional thought in Life as the Source and the thought of life in emotion, which is realized as the poetic discourse of the comprehension of life. Then, the metaphysical thought brought forth by life comprehension is embodied in a philosophical way of speaking. Finally, the post-metaphysical thought shaped under the ground of metaphysics is realized as the representation of ethics and epistemology. Therefore, the Dimensions (jinjie 境界) are nothing more than a return to Source and Origin. At first, we should return from the post-metaphysical beings to the metaphysical Being. Finally, we return to the pure life-emotion of no-being of selfhood (wuwo 无我) and no-being of anything (wuwu 无物)."

The main body of the text was revised as follows. For the convenience of the readers, the subheadings were added in later revisions. In order to expedite research, interlinear notes (for ancient books) and footnotes (for modern writings and the translations) were added. The order of some sections in Lecture III was adjusted. In the final revision, the contents of the book were significantly updated.

Since the lectures were actually unscripted speeches, they were recorded by Li Xiaoyu and transcribed into scripts by Cui Gang, Yang Shengzhao and Wang Tingzhi. I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to them for their hard work!

Yushun Huang

June, 2006

Sichuan University, China

NOTES

1 Cui Gang was a graduate student at Sichuan University in 2002. He is now a Doctor of Philosophy and is currently a teacher at Southwest Jiaotong University.

2 As for Life Confucianism, there has been a more intensive discussion referring to my book Confucianism Facing Life: Huang Yunshun’s Selected Works of Life Confucianism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Huang Yushun. Confucianism Facing Life: Huang Yushun’s Selected Works of Life Confucianism [面向生活本身的儒学——黄玉順生活儒学自选集]. Sichuan University Press, 2006.

LECTURE I

The Gradations of Ideas

The topic of this book is Love and Thought, and the subtitle in the Chinese edition is Modern Interpretation of the Thoughts of Confucianism. It was initially subtitled Modern Transformation of Confucianism. In consideration of the great Source, however, that subtitle was not accurate. My focus is not the so-called modern transformation of Confucianism, since Confucianism remains the same as thousands of years ago at the Source. My prior writings on Life Confucianism being accessible only partly in English, I wish here to provide the reader with a systematic introduction.¹

In my opinion, although Confucianism is wide-ranging and deep, it can be summarized by these key words: Love (ai 爱) and Thought (si 思).

The first key word is Love, which I consider to be an issue of life-emotion (shenghuo qinggan生活情感). It will be the topic of Lecture II. Students of Chinese philosophy might be familiar with the concept of emotion. As a kind of emotion, love has been related to nature-emotion (xing qing 性情) in Confucianism, especially since the Axial period. Since the Axial period, Confucianism has stood for a theory of nature-emotion as a metaphysical construction. In Chinese discourse, nature is the noumenon (ti 体), and emotion is the function (yong 用); nature is the root (ben 本), and emotion, the treetop (mo 末). This is the orthodox Confucian exposition following the school of Zisi-Mencius (simeng xuepai 思孟学派). As expressed in Western discourse, that nature is considered the noumenon addresses the question of ontology or metaphysics, whereas emotion is a post-metaphysical concretization of nature. In the metaphysical idea of Confucianism after the Axial period, the relationship between the metaphysical and the post-metaphysical, and the relation of studying the above in order to arrive at the below, garners considerable attention. Under such a traditional construction, emotion generally refers to moral emotion, which pertains to ethics. No matter whether it is taken in a broad or narrow sense, the law of humans, ethics, or the law of things, physics is a post-metaphysical concern. I will elaborate on the distinction between the metaphysical and the post-metaphysical momentarily.

For the topic of Love, I would say there are two sorts of love that have quite different meanings. When we say the construction of nature-emotion is the relationship of the metaphysical and the post-meta-physical, it means we take the construction to be an issue of the existing beings instead of Being per se. Both the nature and the emotion in the construction of nature-emotion are concerned with beings while the emotion I discuss here is the action of Being per se, which is prior to existing beings. In fact, we have been talking about two different kinds of emotions from the Pre-Axial Period to modern Neo-Confucianism. One is the emotion of beings (post-metaphysical) and the other is about Being per se as the Source. They differ in terms of idea gradations, which I shall explain in this lecture.

The important question I wish to raise in this book is how humans and things as beings are brought forth by the emotion of Love at the gradation of the Source. This is the issue of Thought in Confucianism, and I will discuss it in Lecture III.

Existing beings are brought forth by Being; and humans and things are given birth into Life. This raises a problem of "Being coming from Non-being (wu zhong sheng you 无中生有)." The question arises: how are metaphysical Being and all the post-metaphysical beings, like all things (wanwu 万物), brought forth? How Being comes from Non-being is the matter of Thought. This is a core issue in modern philosophy.

How are beings brought forth? Through the process of birth-giving (sheng 生). This is also a core idea in Confucianism, which has not been explained enough. But Confucius and especially Mencius discuss the issue at length. That Being brings forth beings is called a relation of founding in phenomenology while it is the action of thought in Confucianism. But what does Thought mean in Confucianism?

In this book, I will discuss Love and Thought. In order to address these concepts, however, we need to introduce the prior idea of representation, which is also a fundamental idea in philosophy. In my formulation, I analyze representation in terms of gradations of ideas. In this lecture, therefore, I put forward the basic structure of the gradations of ideas in accordance with Confucian thinking.

Now we might consider a series of gradations of ideas:

Emotion as the Source (Being) → Noumenon (the metaphysical Being) → Laws of humans and things (post-metaphysical beings)

This sequence exhibits the idea gradations and their shifts, which produce all the ideas of our entire life. In this manner we actually become post-metaphysical persons. As Feng Youlan has noted, every one of us who are alive living in first emerges as a moral person.² When the emotion at the gradation of the Source brings forth beings, it happens in the movement from pre-metaphysical to metaphysical Being. At this point, various norms and institutions are implemented and organized. When establishing such norms as a moral norm, a legal norm, an intellectual norm, and so on, we move from the metaphysical to the post-metaphysical.

The problem we face is how to trace these norms back to the Source of their ideas. The question we must think about raises the issue of dimensions (jingjie境界). In the gradations of ideas, what does dimension mean? To understand it, we must retrace our steps and travel in the reverse direction, from the post-metaphysical to the metaphysical. I will cover this topic of dimensions in Lecture IV.

In the present lecture, I put forward the gradation of ideas as the starting point to unfold my conception of Life Confucianism. Since many students are not so familiar with Chinese philosophy and specifically Confucianism, I will adopt a roundabout method of discussion. First, I will introduce themes from writings by Martin Heidegger, an admirer of Lao Tzu. Second, I will clarify the equivalency of idea gradations between Daoism and Confucianism. This will put us in a position to understand the gradations of ideas in Life Confucianism.

1.1 Equality and Equivalency: Proper Name and Functional Position

I have just mentioned the equivalency between Heidegger and Lao Tzu, and the equivalency between Daoism and Confucianism. I want to explain the concept of equivalency before going into a detailed study of the gradations of ideas.

While it is a standard for comparative philosophy, some philosophers claim there is no common factor, no equivalency whatsoever, between China and the West. I have criticized this claim elsewhere.³ Here I will reword the main idea in another way.

In "The Original Dao (yuandao 原道)" included in his Literary Collection, Han Yu began his essay like this:

Universal love (bo ai 博爱) is called benevolence (ren 仁), fit practice of it is called justice (yi 义), embarking upon it is called Dao (dao 道), and taking them as the innate instead of the external is called character (de 德).

In this sentence, Han Yu tells us how to deal with the relations between Confucianism and Daoism. Here, though, we are concerned more broadly with the comparison between different gradations of ideas whenever we are talking about Confucianism and Daoism or China and the West.

As Han Yu says, benevolence and justice are proper names (ding-ming 定名), and Dao and character are functional positions (xuwei 虚位). In my opinion, when Confucians and Daoists were talking about Dao and character, they used different definitions. Such disagreements were common during the Warring-States period. As a Confucian, Han Yu once said, the ‘Dao’ that Lao Tzu named is not the ‘Dao’ that I did; and the ‘character’ that he named is not the ‘character’ that I did. In short, the concepts of Dao or character employed by Confucians and Daoists are as different as proper names are essentially.

Calling something a proper name means that a noun has an essential quality that differentiates it irreducibly from other nouns. The difference among proper names means that there is no equality or complete correspondence between two sides of the equation, regardless of whether those sides speak different languages (such as Chinese and English) or the same language. In Chinese, the Dao or character in Confucianism is not equal to the Dao or character as understood by Daoism. Although the two sides differ from each other in understanding the same proper name, they can talk with each other and make themselves understood. A Confucian and a Daoist can have a meaningful conversation about Dao and